SAN ANTONIO – San Antonio is looking at a $158 million deficit in 2027 which has city leaders looking at where they can make cuts.<\/p>\n
15 organizations are at risk of losing city funding, prompting Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones to put out a call for help.<\/p>\n
WOAI<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
She wants community leaders to step up and shell out some money; saying without financial support, some of the city’s largest programs could take a hit.<\/p>\n
“This is significant, which is why we’re looking at everything,” Mayor Jones said.<\/p>\n
If cuts aren’t determined soon, it could mean a rise in property taxes.<\/p>\n
“If you closed every library.. If you cut all the funding from animal care services, if you took all the money out of the general fund for public health, if you did all that, you’d still have to go find an additional $20 million to close the gap,” Mayor Jones said.<\/p>\n
She sent out a letter to local businesses, foundations and philanthropic leaders on Friday — asking them to consider a three-year funding commitment for any of a list of 15 organizations, including the San Antonio Botanical Garden, San Antonio Parks Foundation and the local Martin Luther King Jr. Commission.<\/p>\n
“When you look at the San Antonio Botanical Garden,” the Mayor said. “[and] some other things that, again, are worthwhile in my mind. I just don’t know if any of those are worth, continuing to fund at the expense of having to raise property taxes.”<\/p>\n
Without outside help, city funding to these organizations could be cut altogether.<\/p>\n
“We were surprised that the mayor would have us as a place to cut, especially cutting 100%,” said Lisa Ayres, Executive Director of the San Antonio Book Festival (SABF). It’s one of the 15 organizations at stake, and it could lose $150,000 from the city.<\/p>\n
“We were disappointed that we were on this list,” Ayres said. “We already work with the community to get support, and so many of the people that probably receive that letter are ones that already fund us.”<\/p>\n
We asked Mayor Jones who the letter was sent to.<\/p>\n
“I sent those to folks you would expect, right? The CEO of USAA, CEO of Valero, the CEO of HEB.”<\/p>\n
She said she hasn’t received any responses yet as of Monday evening.<\/p>\n
We also asked Mayor Jones if the council is fully on board with the proposed cuts. She said they’ll need to look at all the data before they can move forward.<\/p>\n
We’ve reached out to several council members for their thoughts as well. So far, we have heard back from Misty Spears and Marc Whyte.<\/p>\n
Both say they hadn’t spoken with the mayor before the letter was sent, though they agree with some of her points.<\/p>\n
We’ll let you know what we hear from the rest of the council.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO – San Antonio is looking at a $158 million deficit in 2027 which has city leaders…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":388633,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[82,84,83],"class_list":["post-389019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}